The Most Important Answering Service Features

When shopping around for the best answering service, it’s important to understand all the features available and how to use them to your benefit. Below we will answer and discuss the following questions to provide you with a better understanding of just how much an answering service can do:

• What can a call answering service do?
• What features do the best answering services offer?
• Are answering services worth it?

What can a call answering service do?

A call answering service provides a variety of valuable services for businesses of all sizes and types. The most obvious task is simply answering calls, which might sound trivial, but many customers will simply go to the next business on their list if they don’t get a human on the phone quickly.

Once the phone has been answered by a live agent, he or she can schedule appointments, provide customer service, and answer questions about your business. For example, if you maintain dedicated office hours, your live agent can give that information to callers or provide the location of the business.

If the caller is looking to speak with a specific person or department, your live agents can transfer them to the appropriate extension. In the event that you are not available, he or she can take detailed messages. This can prove particularly helpful for business owners who are often in meetings or on the go, such as lawyers, electricians, or service contractors.

What features do the best answering services offer?

While any answering service is capable of picking up calls and assisting customers, the best ones take it a step further and offer useful, innovative features that make life easier for everyone. As a leading call answering service since 1974, Answering Service Care proudly goes above and beyond to offer our clients the features they need most- and none of what they don’t.

Here are some of the features our clients appreciate most:

• Agentless payments, so your business can automatically accept payments over the phone 24/7.
• Our proprietary Spam Blocker feature, which saves you time and money by filtering out automated robocalls before they are answered.
• Email monitoring services, where our live agents can monitor your inboxes to ensure that no important messages, alerts, or inbound email tickets go undetected.
• Text messaging answering services, because that’s how most of your customers prefer to communicate these days.
• Bilingual live agents to improve communication with both your English and Spanish-speaking callers
• HIPAA-compliant answering services to ensure that all private health information is handled properly.
• After-hours answering services, so even the late-night callers receive great service.
• Lead intake services that help you take advantage of every opportunity.
• A mobile app that makes it easy to receive message notifications, listen to your messages on the go, change an on-call contact, pay your bill and more.

Are answering services worth it?

Small business owners across many industries will agree that answering services are worth the investment. The positive interactions that an answering service provides will impress your customers and prospects, improve your company’s reputation, and give you the peace of mind you need to lead your team to success. Here are some of the things business leaders love most about call answering services:

• Having trained professionals who are dedicated to taking calls and managing customer relations ensures that every question, comment, and issue is handled quickly and efficiently. This will significantly improve customer relations and help your business run smoothly.
• You won’t have to stress yourself out over concerns of missing calls from customers or associates, which costs you valuable sales, clients, and business connections. No matter how high the call volume gets, calls will certainly be answered and handled accordingly.
• You and your employees will be able to freely do your work uninterrupted, maximizing productivity and profits.